Programmatic SEO is the practice of generating hundreds or thousands of pages from a template and a dataset: one page per city, per currency pair, per software integration or per product comparison. Done well, it built some of the largest organic traffic engines on the web. Done badly, it is exactly what Google’s scaled content abuse policy was written to stop.
This page brings together the 2024 to 2026 data on how programmatic pages actually perform: how many get indexed, how long it takes, how many stay indexed, how traffic spreads across a page set, how AI-written pages compare, and what Google’s updates did to sites that scaled too far. Where the published numbers leave a gap, we have added our own calculations.
- Key Programmatic SEO Statistics
- Indexing Statistics
- Programmatic Page Performance Statistics
- From Published to Page One: Our Calculation
- AI-Generated Content and Rankings
- What Google’s Updates Did to Programmatic Sites
- Programmatic SEO at Scale: Company Examples
- What the Numbers Say
- Frequently Asked Questions
Key Programmatic SEO Statistics
- Only 37.1% of 14.6 million tracked pages were indexed by Google; 61.9% sat on indexed domains but were not indexed themselves.
- Pages that did get indexed took an average of 27.4 days, and only 14% were indexed within a week.
- 21.3% of indexed pages were later dropped from the index.
- Submitting unindexed pages to indexing tools got 29.4% of them indexed.
- In a 512-page programmatic build, 87% of pages were indexed within 90 days and 40% reached page one.
- The top 10% of programmatic pages in that build drove 42% of clicks; the bottom 30% drove 5%.
- Publishing 80 pages in a single week cut that batch’s indexing rate to 41%.
- Pages with under 20% AI-written text were indexed 49.3% of the time, against 40.4% for pages over 80% AI-written.
- Pages under 50% AI-written content held 82.2% of top-three rankings in a 2026 Ahrefs study.
- Low and moderate-AI pages earned two to three times the impressions of heavily AI-written pages.
- AI-written content made up 17.3% of Google’s top-20 results in September 2025, up from 2.3% in 2019.
- Google’s March 2024 update deindexed 837 of 49,345 tracked sites, wiping out 20.7 million monthly visits.
- All of those deindexed sites showed signs of AI-generated content, and half had 90% to 100% AI-written posts.
- Canva’s roughly 21,000 template pages are estimated to draw over 13 million organic visits a month.
- Zapier’s integration pages are estimated to drive about 16% of its organic traffic.
Indexing Statistics
Indexing is the first and biggest filter for any programmatic project. IndexCheckr‘s study of pages tracked by its users is the largest public dataset on the question, and the headline finding is sobering: most pages never make it into Google’s index at all.
| Statistic | Figure |
|---|---|
| Pages indexed | 5,409,096 (37.08%) |
| Pages not indexed on an indexed domain | 9,036,446 (61.94%) |
| Pages on a domain that was not indexed | 143,068 (0.98%) |
| Average time to index (for pages that were indexed) | 27.4 days |
| Indexed pages later deindexed | 21.29% |
| Previously unindexed pages indexed after submission to tools | 29.37% |
These figures cover all kinds of pages, not only programmatic ones, but programmatic sets are where the problem shows most, because they add large numbers of similar URLs at once. If your pages sit in Search Console’s “Crawled, currently not indexed” report, our guide to fixing crawled but not indexed pages covers the usual causes.
Programmatic Page Performance Statistics
The most detailed public breakdown of a single programmatic build comes from a 512-page case study published by a content vendor, covering 18 months across three template families.
| Template Family | Pages | Indexed Within 90 Days | Reached Page One | Median Monthly Clicks per Page | Share of Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glossary | 186 | 94% | 51% | 38 | 31% |
| City or location | 198 | 89% | 34% | 22 | 48% |
| Integration combinations | 128 | 73% | 28% | 17 | 21% |
| All pages | 512 | 87% | 40% | n/a | 100% |
| Traffic Cohort | Pages | Share of Clicks | Median Clicks per Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 10% | 51 | 42% | 97 |
| Next 20% | 102 | 31% | 36 |
| Next 40% | 205 | 22% | 13 |
| Bottom 30% | 154 | 5% | 4 |
Three things stand out. Glossary pages were indexed and ranked most often, but city pages earned the most revenue, because they matched buyers ready to act. Integration pages, built from combinations of two products, were the weakest on every measure and decayed fastest. And traffic was concentrated: half of all clicks came from fewer than a third of the pages.
| Other Findings From the Same Build | Figure |
|---|---|
| Monthly clicks, month 1 to month 18 | 240 to 11,840 |
| Cost per page | $80 |
| Last-click attributed revenue per page | $1,121 |
| Pages losing over 30% of peak traffic by month 12 | 61 |
| Portfolio decay after a refresh sprint | 19% down to 7% |
| Indexing rate for an 80-page single-week batch | 41% |
Decay management mattered as much as publishing. Refreshing, merging or noindexing weak pages cut the share of decaying pages from 19% to 7%, the same principles covered in our guide to content pruning and content decay.
From Published to Page One: Our Calculation
Combining the IndexCheckr indexing rate (37.1%) and deindexing rate (21.3%) with the case study’s page-one rate (39.6% of 512 pages) gives a rough picture of what a typical programmatic launch faces. Of 1,000 pages published, about 371 get indexed, about 292 stay indexed, and about 116 reach page one. The case study’s own pages performed far better at the indexing stage, at 87%, which shows how much template quality and site authority change the result.
AI-Generated Content and Rankings
Most programmatic pages in 2026 are written or filled with AI. Ahrefs studied about a million ranking pages in June 2026 to measure how AI-written text relates to rankings and indexing.
| Statistic (Ahrefs, 2026) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Ranking pages with under 20% AI content | 54.7% |
| Ranking pages with 80%+ AI content | 9.0% |
| Fully AI-generated ranking pages | 5.3% |
| Top-three rankings held by pages under 50% AI | 82.2% |
| Average AI share at position 1 | 27.1% |
| Average AI share at position 10 | 30.9% |
| Very-high-AI pages at position 1 | 8.4% |
| Very-high-AI pages at position 10 | 11.7% |
The pattern is a gentle slope, not a cliff. Heavily AI-written pages can rank, but they are indexed less often and earn fewer impressions. Ahrefs’ own conclusion was that Google does not punish AI content as such, it punishes bad content, a point we also make in AI SEO myths.
Originality.ai‘s long-running tracker shows the share of AI-written pages in Google’s top 20 climbing from 2.3% in 2019 to a high of 19.6% in July 2025, with visible dips after major updates such as March 2024.
What Google’s Updates Did to Programmatic Sites
In March 2024 Google introduced its scaled content abuse policy, which covers producing many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, whether by AI, by people or by templates. It was released with a core update that Google said would reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in results by around 40%.
| Statistic (March 2024 Update) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Sites tracked in Ian Nuttall’s dataset | 49,345 |
| Sites deindexed | 837 (1.7%) |
| Monthly organic visits lost | 20.7 million+ |
| Monthly display ad revenue lost | $446,552 |
| Deindexed sites showing AI-generated content | 100% |
| Deindexed sites with 90% to 100% AI-written posts | 50% |
These figures, reported by Search Engine Journal, describe the extreme end: whole sites removed by manual action. The more common outcome for weak programmatic sets is quieter: pages that are never indexed, or that slip out of the index months later.
| Programmatic Pattern | How It Fared in Recent Updates |
|---|---|
| City pages with identical copy and only the city name changed | Heavy losses |
| Keyword-modifier pages with no unique data | Heavy losses |
| AI-rewritten product or review pages with no original data | Heavy losses |
| Job boards and directories with real, unique listings | Held or grew |
| Comparison tools with live pricing or data | Held or grew |
| Real estate and travel pages with genuine inventory | Held or grew |
Programmatic SEO at Scale: Company Examples
| Company | Programmatic Page Type | Estimated Scale | Estimated Organic Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canva | One page per design template | About 21,000 template pages | 13 million+ organic visits a month from template pages |
| Zapier | “[App] integrations” pages | Tens of thousands of pages | About 16% of organic traffic |
| Wise | “[Currency] to [currency]” converter pages | Thousands of currency pairs | Tens of millions of monthly visits |
| Tripadvisor | Location and attraction pages | Millions of pages | Core of its organic traffic |
| G2 | “[Product] alternatives” and comparison pages | Large review-driven library | Major source of buyer-intent traffic |
Estimates come from third-party traffic tools reported by MADX and others, and are directional. What every example shares is a unique dataset behind each page: live exchange rates, real templates, real integrations, real reviews.
What the Numbers Say
| Finding | What It Means for a Programmatic Project |
|---|---|
| Only about 37% of pages get indexed | Plan for most pages to be filtered out unless each one adds something new |
| 21% of indexed pages later drop out | Monitor indexing monthly, not just at launch |
| 80 pages in one week indexed at 41% | Publish in steady batches rather than all at once |
| The top 10% of pages earn 42% of clicks | Find the winning templates early and invest in them |
| Integration pages decayed nearly three times faster than glossary pages | Only build combinations with real search demand |
| Mostly human-written pages are indexed 9 points more often | Use AI to scale structure, not to replace real data and editing |
| Sites with unique data survived updates; template-swap sites did not | The dataset is the product; the template is only the wrapper |
Programmatic pages also need a crawlable structure and steady internal links to get found. Our guides to getting Google to index a site faster and building topical authority cover the groundwork.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Programmatic SEO Still Work in 2026?
Yes, when each page is built on unique, useful data. Directories with real listings, comparison tools with live data and sites with genuine inventory held up through recent updates, while template pages with only a keyword swapped lost heavily.
What Percentage of Programmatic Pages Get Indexed?
It varies widely. Across 14.6 million tracked pages, 37.1% were indexed. A well-built 512-page programmatic set reached 87% indexing within 90 days.
How Long Does It Take for Programmatic Pages to Rank?
Pages that get indexed take about 27 days on average. In one 18-month case study, traffic began compounding around month six and accelerated by month nine.
Can AI-Generated Programmatic Pages Rank?
Some do. In Ahrefs’ 2026 study, 9% of ranking pages were 80% or more AI-written, but such pages were indexed less often and earned fewer impressions than mostly human-written ones.
What Is Scaled Content Abuse?
It is Google’s policy, introduced in March 2024, against producing many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, whether by AI, people or templates, without adding value for users.
How Many Pages Should I Publish at Once?
Steady batches work better. In one case study, a batch of 80 pages published in a single week was indexed at only 41%, against 87% for the project overall.
Which Programmatic Page Types Perform Best?
In the 512-page study, glossary pages had the highest indexing (94%) and page-one rate (51%), while city pages earned the most revenue (48%).
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